The Blogg

I submitted the following to Slate’s Hive project on transportation issues based on an idea I have often thought about during long, monotonous drives. I had written much more, but needed to pare it down to 1200 words:

My proposal is for intracity travel. In spite of gas price spikes and global warming fears, the American fascination with personal automobiles persists. Passenger rail is unpopular because it is slow, expensive, and requires renting a vehicle at the destination if one will be required. I propose to build alongside existing limited access roads with few interchanges a rail system designed to carry anything smaller than a full-size van. When motorists arrive at such a highway they could choose to drive it as usual, or to pay a fee to drive their vehicle into a rail car, where it would be secured until they reached their exit. Because all traffic is on rails and automatically controlled, this system could safely operate at speeds far above those allowed on the highway. Much like some existing locomotives, these rail cars could be powered by electricity generated from renewable resources and distributed through a “third rail”. This proposal would allow people to continue using the personal automobiles that they love, while helping to transition away from fossil fuel use, speeding long journeys, preventing crashes, and allowing motorists to focus on other tasks.

According to news releases, NBC Universal has chosen to cancel long-running drama Law & Order. Wikipedia claims the same fate for Law & Order: Criminal Intent, but their source has gone missing and I can find no corroboration. In exchange, we are to get a new spin-off set in Los Angeles.

The glory days of Lennie Briscoe investigating cases and Jack McCoy trying them were never coming back, but I actually thought the current detectives and attorneys were quite interesting and believable. I enjoyed the original series more than any of its spin-offs because of its unique split in focus between the police and the courts. While there are probably lots of reasons that viewership has dropped over the years, I think one of the greatest threats to Law & Order was competition from itself. By now the series has covered just about every possible interesting scenario multiple times. Between NBC, USA, and TNT, you could practically watch a rerun from one of the related franchises all day, every day. With such an extensive catalog (and my poor cultural memory) many are as good as a new episode. Add in all of the CSI franchises, NCIS, and the rest of the crime procedurals produced in recent years and there is a real glut of material.

Still, it would have been nice to see them make 21 seasons and take the record as longest-running drama. As for Criminal Intent, they essentially jettisoned the entire cast at the beginning of this season. Jeff Goldblum’s character is ok, but it was really only Vincent D’Onofrio’s portrayal of Robert Goren that made the show work. I would not be surprised to find that their ratings have fallen off a cliff in the last few months. Even Special Victims Unit has been going down hill recently, featuring cases filled with implausible and unexplained events. I assume the primary reason a version of Law & Order set in Los Angeles is expected to do well is that it will have a much lower casting budget than the original. Perhaps it will prove to be just as good, but it will be difficult to pique my interest in an entirely new cast of characters.

If you’ve not watched the show “Community” Thursdays on NBC, you should give the first few episodes a try. I think it may have surpassed “The Office” as my favorite show in that lineup, as good Office episodes have become less and less common. “Parks And Recreation” is also quite good, but that is a topic for another time. “Community” is much like “Family Guy” in that more than half of the show is parodying other media, lampshade hanging, taking reasonable ideas to their illogical extremes, and one-liners. Initially character development was important, but more recent episodes have been mostly exploring how the characters interact in increasingly absurd scenarios.

That said, this week’s episode was especially made of win. I have never played paintball myself. It sounds like a lot of fun in theory, but I feared it would devolve into arguments about who shot first, whether or not someone had really been hit, etc. If it were played as in this episode, where people struck with paint immediately act like corpses, I would be all about that. I did try laser tag once many years ago, assuming that the use of sensors would mean that one’s weapon would be disabled as soon as they became a casualty. Instead there were no tactics whatsoever and opponents just stood across from each other scoring a dozen hits each before returning to power their weapons at their own base. Do there exist more “realistic” forms of this?

While I would not expect a comedy of this nature to be extremely careful about continuity, there was something that made little sense to me in this one. For at least the first half dozen episodes Jeff took no trouble to hide from Britta or anyone else his desire to get in her pants. Now when people say there is sexual tension between them he denies it. What gives?

Given that April 1, 2010 started just a few minutes ago in UTC, it is time to stop believing anything you read on the Internet in the next 48 hours. For starters, someone has done a fantastic job at Wikipedia.

Scott Adams today touched on a topic that I first thought about in the context of flood insurance circa Hurricane Katrina. The supposed purpose of insurance (though this has been perverted in the case of health and life insurance) is to spread risk over the population. With a large number of participants and an event that affects individuals randomly and at a fairly predictable rate, it makes sense for all participants to pay into a pool from which those affected by an event are compensated with the overhead going to profit for a broker. But when we are talking about an event that, if it occurs, will affect a large percentage of the participants, this breaks down.

If everyone in Louisiana (or Californian earthquake survivors) files a claim for the value of their home in the same year, there is no way the insurer will have the assets to be able to pay them. One option for the company would be to borrow enough cash to pay those claims and pay down the debt with premiums from future years, but they could also simply declare bankruptcy and leave all of their customers with nothing. Seeing the financial meltdown over the last two years, I suppose they would actually buy insurance against having to make a large payout from a larger company, who would in turn try to offset their risk. In theory this might allow the whole system to work, but it seems just as likely that all of these companies would fail together.

If you were an evil genius, as we have seen a great number of Wall Street executives are, why not create a flood / earthquake / etc insurance company, sell lots of policies, and have no intention of ever paying on them? The worst that happens is that you dissolve the company, take the boatloads of money you have earned in salary over the years, and start a new one. I am sure there are all sorts of regulations on insurers requiring them to hold a certain percentage of their total potential liability in semi-liquid assets, but doing so to the extent that would be necessary to cover these kinds of widespread disasters would make the entire enterprise untenable.

I suppose the same problem exists with any transaction in which you pay a fee now for the promise of a service in the future, but insurance against natural disasters seems like an especially easy way to throw a lot of money into what could be essentially a legal scam.

If you are unaware, a few weeks ago someone hacked into the servers of a climatologist research group and released emails and other documents that have created quite a stir. You can read about it on wikipedia or a news article. In light of the current summit in Copenhagen, I thought it was time to put down a few thoughts inspired by the recent events and general anthropogenic global warming controversy.

1: I am glad that my research is of no particular interest to more than a few dozen people and will certainly not be driving any governmental policy decisions. I can see plenty of analogues to the controversial e-mails in my own archives. Phil Jones wrote about a “trick” to “hide” a data anomaly. I’ve gone back and forth with my co-authors about the best way to present data; a logarithmic scale is much more informative, but they insisted that a linear scale was necessary for people just glancing through to realize how impressive the results were. Michael Mann urged colleagues to stop publishing at a journal that he believed was publishing politically-motivated articles. Someone I work with warned others in a specific research community when a new journal in that field was created with an editorial board full of people who had never published work in that field in any well-known venue. I would not care to have to explain myself to raging hordes convinced I was guilty of fraud.

2: Although I do not find much damning evidence in the leaked documents, some of the other things I have read about are disturbing. In a relatively unimportant field like mine it would be wrong to refuse to provide my data and methods to anyone who asked. The credibility of any result is directly proportional to the ability of others to reproduce it. In a field that will shape society for the next decade, it is downright immoral to hold back this information for intellectual property reasons. (For the record, I know of two researchers unaffiliated with me who are using my code. Feel free to download ch-htn-tools-1.0.tar.gz if you would like.)

3: It is probably the best that can be done under the circumstances, but it seems that most of what climatologists do is only science by a very broad definition. With data that goes back half a century, proxy data that allows us to guess at much older values but depends on its own set of questionable assumptions, and an extremely complex system that cannot be duplicated and that usually operates on a scale of millennia, testing hypotheses becomes rather difficult. If a theory has no predictive power that can be validated, then it is of limited use. (My own work and much computer science research can similarly be derided as unscientific. In my world the really interesting thing is the invention of a way to solve a problem, and then we tack on experimental studies of that methodology to add a veneer of sciency-ness.)

4: This is but one of many examples, but it is truly amazing how often people believe that they are more qualified than experts to have an opinion on a topic. I have an opinion on most everything (as you readers know), but I do not assume myself to be superior to those who actually know what they are talking about. Climate change is indeed up for debate, as is just about anything else. But that does not mean it is a matter of opinion, or that what is true for me might not be true for you. You can believe that scientists are wrong, or are falsifying global warming to usher in a worldwide fascist regime, or secretly know that vaccines cause autism but are bribed into lying by pharmaceutical companies. But unless you can offer actual evidence supporting one of those theories, it is not clear to me why anyone should care what you believe about it.

5: As per #4, you should not care what I think about climate change since I am far from an expert on the subject, but I will tell you anyway. If the majority of experts in the field believe that global temperatures are rising and that carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause (they do), then I do too. The fact that it seems colder where I am than last year is not strong enough evidence to discredit their years of work, nor is the fact that the climate has (very slowly) changed in the past without human intervention. This does not mean that I think the joint statement from the IPCC has it all figured out; just that they have come to the most reasonable conclusion based on the available data. What, if any, policy changes should be enacted is an entirely different and unscientific question. That leads to my next thought.

6: If, as seems to be the consensus, we are already in a bad position and getting worse everyday, it is going to require some serious sacrifices to avert disaster. In my (non-expert) opinion, the kind of policies that would be necessary to reverse such a trend would never be accepted. There is simply no way that developing countries will agree not to use early industrial technology unless we either find a reasonably priced alternative energy source (looks unlikely in the near future), give them absolutely enormous sums of money (not going to happen), or bomb them into extinction (not exactly a positive outcome). First-world countries should be able to hold the line on emissions relatively painlessly, but making significant cuts will be impossible without most Americans giving up luxuries they have become accustomed to, and I do not see the political will to do so. If the climatologists are correct, the next two decades are going to be very interesting times.

7: Finally, I do not think the leaked CRU documents reveal any egregious ethical violations. But suppose you believed firmly and completely that the world as you knew it was going to be destroyed unless you did something. Would you be willing to commit fraud if necessary to avert this disaster? I have to think the answer is yes. Replace fraud with any other moral, legal, or ethical lapse and I think the answer remains the same. Surety can be rather frightening. I was reading somewhere else (sorry, I no longer recall where, nor looked for proof) that a scientist was discouraged from doing some certain research because it might produce results that contradict the consensus on global warming and that to risk this would be immoral. What kind of nonsense is that? But it makes perfect sense if you already know that you are right, which is an entirely unscientific mindset.

Football season, Conan moving to the Tonight Show, and new episodes of The Office, House, and Family Guy mean that I have been watching a relatively large amount of television recently. I could record everything and then skip commercials while watching later, but they do not generally bother me that much. I’ve said it before: if you introduce me to a product that I was previously unaware of and have a use for, there is a very good chance your advertisement might lead to a sale. If you provide me with valuable information or a good laugh and all other things are equal, I might choose you over a competitor as thanks. But awful advertisements guarantee that I will never, ever be a customer of yours.

We are now in the Scranton / Wilkes-Barre market, although fairly far away from those cities, and there are some truly terrible commercials for local businesses. Toyota Scion of Scranton is the worst of the worst. I cannot find a video, so you will have to imagine the awfulness from my description. The basic, moronic premise of the advertisement is that you should choose the dealership from which you buy your car based on your small child’s preference, rather than price, service, or anything else. The tagline is “Don’t let your kid get hosed, come to Toyota Scion of Scranton!”. Along the way we get to see simply dreadful acting by a young boy, a girl who somehow cannot speak clearly, and incredibly annoying spring sound effects as the girl jumps around washing a car in giant boots. They have a second one in which the girl is at the dealership and still bad, but not nearly on the same level.

The runner-up in awful commercials for local businesses is attorneys Lenahan & Dempsey. I like the premise of their clip: that insurance companies are evil money-grubbing entities making the rich richer, and that the only way to get a fair deal from them is with the services of these lawyers. While it is a bit over the top, the type of people in a position to need their services are probably already in this frame of mind. But the acting is again positively heinous. A very old, rich looking man either laughingly turns down claims or explains doing so to his grandchildren (depending on the ad), then reacts in horror when he finds that the people he has been saying “no” to have called Lenahan & Dempsey. You can see one of these for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoo3v3rVqDA. You might think that lawyers might want to maintain some dignity so that they can look their clients, opposing counsel, and judges in the eye, but apparently not,

I believe We Do Metal Roofs is actually a national organization, but perhaps not. Their commercial does not include gimmicky acting and actually explains why their service may be economical in the long run, so it sounds like exactly the kind of advertisement I would praise. There are very amateurish graphics, but I can live with that. What makes this terrible is that at several points in the clip there is a very loud siren-like sound. Presumably the intent is to attract your attention even if you have been tuning it out, but the result is that I want to punch whoever wrote it.

Southwest Airlines is running several different commercials focusing on the fact that they have no luggage fees, which is fine. In one of them a woman says “$20 for the first bag, then $30 for the next — round-trip that’s almost $100!”. Yeah, I guess $100 is almost $100 under a loose definition of almost. There was one more that I wanted to complain about, but I cannot seem to remember what it was. If I come up with it, I will update.

Bonus note: I generally do not really watch Late Night with Jimmy Fallon because it is almost pathetic how unfunny he is. Since it does come on after the Tonight Show, however, I usually have it on in the background. I was very pleased to happen to hear Chick Corea sitting in with house band The Roots tonight, playing snippets from “Spain” and other great songs. Also the musical guest is They Might Be Giants. This should make it worth watching even if I have to sit through an embarrassing monologue and “lick it for 10″.

UPDATE: Having seen it again, I now remember what the other questionable advertisement was. Verizon is running one in which, to save money, the patriarch of a household turns off the hot water, only drives halfway to locations and makes his daughter walk the rest of it, and eschews electric lighting. In addition, he switches the family’s cell service to Verizon. This is ok, but do you really want to leave viewers with the impression that becoming one of your customers is a sacrifice on this level? I guess they can get away with this because they have run so many other commercials lauding the quality of their service, but it seems like someone did not quite think it through.

UPDATE 2: You can see the We Do Metal Roofs example at http://www.metalroofs.tv/index2.html, it is the first one with the woman standing in front of the American Flag pickup truck.

UPDATE: See comments that clarify that my understanding of this was not quite accurate.

I saw on the news this morning that someone had released a small game for the iPhone platform in which the player would calm down a crying and screaming baby by shaking it. Apple pulled the game from its application store when they realized the abject stupidity of it. Don’t take me to be a Jack Thompson fan, nothing could be further from the truth!, but this is simply irresponsible. There are (apparently) lots of people who are somehow unaware that shaking an infant can easily result in severe trauma or death. There are not people who are unaware that the actions taken by the protagonist of GTA4 are less than wise or virtuous.

Perhaps this could be a new opportunity for serial killers: convincing large numbers of other people to take actions that they believe to be safe but are actually quite dangerous.

Do you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children’s books? I had completely forgotten about them until today. The market was flooded for them, so you could pick up a stack for a quarter a piece at yard sales. I amassed quite a library through such means, and it probably included 30 examples of this genre. When reading them I always tried to take the “correct” path first, but I would also use my fingers as bookmarks to be able to go back and explore the entire space of results. I imagine I made a rather comical sight trying to turn a page while keeping eight fingers spread throughout the book. It can’t have been good for the spine either, but at that price I did not really care.

I was reminded of this because I was a link to Survive The Outbreak, a modern-day version. (Warning, violence and profanity aplenty.) I am not sure that the multimedia version works quite as well, but it was a great creative idea. (Unless there were predecessors of which I am unaware.) It could have been a bit longer and I would have liked to see less footage reuse, but even as is I am sure it required an incredible amount of effort from the creators. Of course, I explored every part of the tree. My first attempt got only to the third level before I died a horrible, painful death.

You’ve probably heard about the closing of Circuit City and how they jacked up their prices so they could offer deep discounts that would leave their merchandise still more expensive than the same thing at many other retailers. There is another business near me that seems to be closing very poorly. A year or two ago D&D Home Furnishings moved from a dwindling shopping center near our apartment to one even closer with, I am sure, significantly higher rent. They had a sale at the old location to avoid moving stock, but we still found the prices to be fairly steep.

They are now going out of business, and have been doing so for at least two months. During this time they have been running regular television advertisements and are paying at least three people to stand at major intersections holding large signs all day every day. I suppose that sticking the signs in the ground would be trespassing but somehow having a person stand there and hold it is not. Perhaps these efforts have slightly increased sales, but to me they seem like a giant waste of money that could be going to the creditors who are getting screwed by the bankruptcy ruling.